Kalan and I had the best time in Atlanta for our three year anniversary last weekend. The traffic to Atlanta wasn't horrible, which was nice; we dropped Lauren off at the mall before setting off to find our hotel. Kalan neglected to write the name of the hotel down, so we relied completely on the mapquest directions he had printed out earlier that day. In spite of the fact that we've been to Atlanta a thousand times, we got in the habit of getting lost quite a bit this weekend. So, after driving around for about an hour, I finally told Kalan to buy us a map.

I figured out where we were and where we should be, and we were off. Not too much later, we found our Double Tree hotel.

We used Hotwire to get a room, so our hotel and room selection were both a surprise. I'd stayed at a Double Tree a few times before, so I knew they were nice enough. We went into our room after checking in, and I noticed that something was amiss; there was a door to the bathroom, a sink area, a closet, a television, a couch, doors to the balcony, a table, and some (pretty nice) chairs, but where was the bed? We walked around the television and got our answer: there was another room. We had gotten a suite.

And damn, was that suite nice. Inside the bedroom was another closet, doors to a second balcony, a door to the bathroom, and one gigantic king-sized bed.

As you can see, it was a damn comfortable bed. Once we stopped giggling like schoolgirls over our luck, we set our stuff down and relaxed for the rest of the night. We discovered we were located in a nice area; there were plenty of places to eat right near the hotel, and a sizable mall was less than half a mile away. We got some Wendy's for dinner and planned our Saturday.

On our way out of the hotel, Kalan and I noticed an amusing sign next to the elevator.

Thank you sign; now I know that if I hear a "WHOOP, WHOOP," that's the alarm going off. Never would've known that without you. Anyway, we set off for some yarn stores after getting some lunch at Chick-Fil-A. Unfortunately, we ended up getting lost once again, and it took us an hour to get to Strings and Strands. We were more and more thankful that we had the foresight to get a map. Inside, Kalan bought me some really great yarn; I scored six hanks of Noro Lily for $33 and a hank of some gorgeous peacock-painted merino sock yarn. I left the store quite happy.

We found Why Knot Knit with no mishaps, and I went nuts once again. This time, I bought four hanks of Cascade 220 to be made into a cardigan, two balls of lofty cotton yarn for a hat, and a happy purple ball of cotton-blend sock yarn. After I bought the yarn, I asked if I could wind up the Cascade hanks on their ball winder. The owner said that certainly I could and sent me back with an employee since I have never actually used one before. So the employee set the first hank up on the swift and gave me the end. I put it in the ball winder and began to wind up the yarn.

For some reason, the yarn wasn't winding smoothly; it kept catching and stopping. The employee couldn't figure out why it was doing this, so when the winding got smoother, she left Kalan and I to wind on our own. So I wound along as Kalan watched the swift when all of a sudden we heard a loud snap. We froze instantly, then stared at eachother. What in the hell was that? We looked at the swift and saw that one of the wooden arms had snapped. Apparently, when the employee had put the hank on the swift, one of the ends had wrapped around the shaft and tightened as I wound the ball. The tightening put pressure on the swift, resulting in the snapped wood. My first instinct was how to get out of the store without being seen, but I ended up finding the employee and telling her we had a problem.

She surveyed the mess and got the owner to take a look. We explained what happened (hoping she would see that it wasn't our fault), and she replaced the swift with a smaller model and let me continue winding. We were so relieved that we didn't have to pay for the swift; apparently that model was worth $200. Kalan and I wound up the rest of the hanks before heading home. Back at the hotel, I snapped a quick picture of my winnings:

Aren't they beautiful? It makes me want to cry. Oh, and guess how long it took us to drive back to the hotel? Ten minutes, if that much. We got pretty lost earlier that day.

We dropped by the mal, where I bought part of Kalan's anniversary present: Indigo Prophecy for the PC. I had also bought him the translated novel Nightwatch since he loved the movie so much. We stuffed ourselves at the Cheesecake Factory and rested our gluttonous selves back at the hotel. It was a very nice day.

On Sunday, we packed our things , checked out, and went on our way. I called Lauren as we were pulling out of the parking lot, and she off-handedly mentioned that it had been daylight savings last night, setting the clock ahead one hour. A sense of dread set in as Kalan and I realized that it was actually 1:00 pm and not noon. We drove back to the hotel, and Kalan ran in to check to see if we had been charged an extra day. Fortunately, we hadn't; apparently it had been happening to a lot of people that day. Relieved, we drove to Columbus after a really great weekend. Happy anniversary, Kalan!